Today at the pond

 I noticed a blue tailed damselfly, ischnura elegans, at the pond today. That's only the second one I've seen. This one is a female of the violet form.



There were also two more exuviae from common darters - but I have not seen any of the darters yet this year!

Darters have bred!

Last August I recorded common darters laying eggs in my front pond and posted a picture. The original large picture is here.







Today I found three exuviae of common darters on the leaves of my water iris. So the pond has successfully bred common darters along with a host of azure damsels and large red damsels.

A walk in the woods

It's bluebell time! Yesterday I went for a walk with Petra in one of our local bluebell woods.

It was just a sea of blue.

I don't think I have ever seen such a mass of bluebells before.

Let's hope these woods are preserved for the future.

Masses of eggs.

I've never come across these before. They are egg masses laid by a water snail, Lymnaea stagnalis, sometimes known as the the great pond snail. My garden pond is full of these snails this year and there are large quantities of the egg masses laid on leaves which have fallen in the water.

When out of the water the egg masses look like transparent jellies, up to about an inch long.

There can be up to 120 eggs in each mass! So plenty of snails next year.

Garden wildlife

After my walk on Chantry Hill I was relaxing in the evening in my garden when I noticed a little visitor on one of my birdfeeders.

It looks like it was a yellow necked mouse. It was bigger than the usual wood mice that we see. It enjoyed a good meal of sunflower seeds.

A walk on Chantry Hill

A sunny day on Monday, so a walk on the downs. There was plenty to see. A fox carrying a mouthful of freshly caught prey; ravens, kestrel and buzzards; yellowhammers and tree pipits; grey partridges running; skylarks singing.  The grass was full of violets and cowslips. The blackthorn was in full flower. I met two lizards, running across my foot! So much to see, it's a place I'll be going again.

Cup fungus

I found this strange rubbery cup fungus in one of my gravel patches today.


I haven't been able to identify it but it looks similar to peziza types.

Any suggestions are welcome.